Brave New World
The world of marketing
is fraught with ethical dilemmas. There are worrisome
implications if companies actually figured out how to manipulate
people at a subconscious level. The latest trend is
Neuromarketing: Advertising
Age, Is Neurmarketing a Fantasy or the
Future? (registration required):
Some would argue
that marketing is manipulation. People often think marketing is a
game of cat and mouse, evolution and co-evolution, attack and
defense, between consumer and advertiser. Both sides are aware of
the tête-à-tête they are engaged in, but for the most part, people
believe they choose their paths and maintain their free will.
Although the primary goal of marketing, to convince consumers to
purchase clients' products, is obviously not altruistic; not all
marketing is a manipulation of consumers. Good marketing brings
information to life, bad marketing is style over substance and
ultimately fails, but nonetheless contributes to the perception
that marketing only exists to "trick" people into purchasing
needless products.
Neuromarketing, and
the research that supports it, potentially circumvents the battle
between good marketing and bad marketing. In a maniacal
advertiser's dream, instead of trying to outthink and cajole
potential customers into buying a product, the possibility of
neuromarketing offers a deeper, more visceral compulsion that can
be used to compel consumers to buy, buy, buy.
Between World War I and
World War II, agencies hired psychiatrists to better understand
consumer motivation and make up for shortcomings in quantitative
research. In the 50s, people worried about subliminal advertising.
And yet today advertising remains very much an art over a
science.